From April 2015, nurseries, schools, childminders and other childcare providers will be able to claim extra funding through the Early Years Pupil Premium to support children’s development, learning and care.
National data and research tells that children eligible for free school meals tend to do less well, for example in 2014 45% of children eligible for free school meals achieved the expected level at the end of the early years foundation stage compared with 64% of other children. The Early Years Pupil Premium will provide us with extra funding to close this gap.
The Early Years Pupil Premium provides an extra 53 pence per hour for three and four year old children whose parents are in receipt of certain benefits or who have been in care or adopted from care. This means an extra £302 a year for each child taking up the full 570 hours funded entitlement to early education. This additional money could make a significant difference to us.
We can use the extra funding in any way we choose to improve the quality of the early years education that we provide for your child. This could include for example additional training for our staff on early language, investing in partnership working with our colleagues in the area to further our expertise or supporting our staff in working on specialised areas such as speech and language.
It is well documented that high quality early education can influence how well a child does at both primary and secondary school so we do want to make the most of this additional funding. You may be aware if you have older children that a pupil premium has been available for school age children and it has proved to have given a real boost to the children receiving the funding. We want to do the same for our early years children entitled to this funding.
Children starting in our Nursery Class will have been given a form to complete at admission to apply for this Early Years Pupil Premium. However if you think your circumstances have changed, we would very much appreciate it if you could complete a fresh form available from the school office or click the link below.